Throwback Thursday

Hello!

I'm 2 months into blogging now and throughly enjoying it! I've decided to join in with a linky from The Teachers Desk this week - Throwback Thursday - to re-publish one of my first posts! I thought of this one today as I was observed my some colleagues teaching guided reading and wished afterwards that I had got the big books out and showed them how they can be used so successfully in guided reading sessions! 

Here is my post about that:

Non-Fiction Explorers

We've done plenty of work on non fiction texts this year - looking at them in guided reading sessions and writing information texts, non chronological reports, instructions, recounts etc. 

I just wanted to check if some of my class could remember and recognise the main features when looking at non fiction books. I stumbled across this free resource on TpT and it was just what I needed.

I declared us Non Fiction Explorers and we started by matching the feature picture and name together:

Next I gave them the scavenger hunt sheet. Some looked at books from the library and other looked at big books on the carpet with me. They chose a book and ticked off the features as they spotted them. I had some of them use sticky notes to draw arrows to and label the features so I could be sure they were really spotting them and were getting it right (and were not just ticking them off without actually finding them).

The big books in school just seem to gather dust these days as texts are so easily available and shared online and on the IWB. I've realised they are perfect for guided reading though and that the kids loved having them out on the carpet and sharing them together. They'll definitely be featuring in my guided reading sessions for independent work more often now.

Once they were done finding the features they read in pairs and recorded interesting facts ready to share with the rest of the class at the end of the lesson. I learned at lot during that time...

Did you know that foxes have whiskers on their legs as well as their faces, which they use to help them find their way? And that astronauts can see the Great Barrier Reef from space? My class thought these facts were amazing!